Second Youth
by lady.baroque
Summary: Caspian and Susan get a second chance at a future together.
1. Death

**Second Youth**

**Pairing:** Susan/Caspian

**Rating**: K+

**'Verse**: AU, Futurefic, movie-verse.

**Summary**: Caspian and Susan get a second chance at a future together.

**A/N**: This was written quite some time ago. It was meant to be a multi-chapter fic, but... I never finished it. I know for sure now that I'm not _ever _going to, sadly, but I thought this could be enjoyed by some for what it is: an intriguing fragment. I also gave Ramandu's daughter a name: Estelle (latin for star).

* * *

Caspian remembered those nights of jasmine-scented darkness; a jasmine summer, he'd called it, and he remembered the dull forest greenery and the scarlet blood that had spurted out of tender veins like water from a sieve. The only thing that remained elusive was her–he remembered her less, with each passing year, so that eventually she'd become a shadow who lived on at the twilight edge of those dark evenings in his memory.

The young days, the early springs of youth, were, of course, the most poignant season in a man's life. Emotions ran wilder, freer and he could still feel (a _little_) what it had felt like then, to be young and alive, and have the blood running hot and fast, like a siren's song, in his veins. Everything came easily to the young: movement, grace, words and, above all, love. Love made everyone a fool, but, if you were lucky, it could deliver you to someone who loved you in return, enough to stay by you even as the first blush of youth had faded from your cheeks.

He hadn't known that then–that love was something that bloomed over time, and wasn't just blind lust or infatuation, but was something deeper and richer that took a quiet, plaintive hold over the heart. But, even so, he'd never forgotten that kiss; her face, her form might be a hollow vessel, but, even after, he had known that he had never felt as alive as in those moments when she had cradled his face in her hands, her tear-stained cheeks brushing his...

But illicit passion, even unconsummated, was the province of the foolish and the young. It was not practical, he thought, and it wasn't the first time in his life that his mind wandered along the familiar, cynical avenues: why must life be so difficult and disappointing? Perhaps he should be thinking happier thoughts this close to death, but he was old now and he had earned, he believed, the right to be bitter and long for the simple, heavenly days of yesteryear, when he had still been able to mount a horse and wield a sword heavier than a child's wooden play stick.

He shifted in his sick bed, then, and waved off the surgeons and holy men who had gathered close.

"Close the curtains," he said and was appalled at his soft, dull voice.

Two servants, and his heir, obeyed him. His heir, the Prince Rilian; how sickly his son looked now, in the candle-lit gloom, with pale, sweat-slicked skin and shadows underneath his eyes. He won't much outlive me, Caspian thought and, with a moaning cry, he stretched out his hand towards his son, but the black, velvet curtains had been already drawn around the bed, leaving Caspian alone, divorced from the world with only his dreamy, feverish thoughts to sustain him in his final moments.

His mind began to wander over the old terrain of his young days; by some sort of tacit agreement between mind and memory, his thoughts shied away from the dreadful topic of his son's illness. Instead, he thought of his murdered father (hardly an improvement) and, unbidden, his father's voice floated into his mind: _the past is a foreign country, son, they do things differently there_. And so it was with youth, Caspian knew at last, and with his childish infatuation for Susan ( _yes, think of pretty, witty Susan_!). He pressed on, riding the past like a wave as he thought about old passions turned to dust with the passage of time and, yet, they lived on; a strange yearning lived inside his bones, like a sun-warmed stone at midnight, and all he had to do was think of Susan and their summer of stolen glances to feel the ghostly echo of past heat. It hadn't been love, of course, but so often in life it was the missed opportunities that fueled desire and obsession; the road not taken, for Caspian, had always been seductive, infinitely alluring.

Susan represented such a fork in the path of his life; when she had left, she had left forever, and that future was indelibly closed to him. He'd constructed his life, then, out of different parts: from his short marriage to the Star Queen, and to their birth of their only child, Rilian. Caspian had ruled Narnia as an exemplary High King and he had loved his wife, fiercely, and it had destroyed him when she'd died: his darling Estelle had laid out in black on the Royal funeral pyre and Caspian had known then what it felt like to have one's soul cleaved into halves. But that was almost forty years ago; he knew that, in death, Estelle was where she had always wanted to be, with her father in the heavens, looking down on the imperfect human lives below. He had loved Rilian, too, and perhaps that had been the best thing of all to come from his and Estelle's love. Caspian had adored his son dearly, and had done everything for that beautiful boy...

"Close the curtains," he whispered and then realized that the curtains were already closed. Susan; Peter; Estelle; Aslan; your uncle, Miraz... What had he been thinking about? The old days, certainly–before everything had become marred with bitterness and stained with the sun-dried greys of sadness. Everything changed, Caspian knew, and somehow, he too had changed without realizing it; where was that courageous, handsome boy who'd fought so hard to obtain a crown?

Gone, gone, gone... He sighed, noisily, and his thoughts descended into a whirl of chaos; his body, feeble and useless, was wracked by shivers and spasms that made his teeth rattle so hard that he accidentally bit clean through his tongue, drawing a swell of blood into his mouth.


	2. Rebirth

The blood tasted hot and moist, like a lazy afternoon, and there he was, suddenly. The valley stretched out forever before him, verdant and pleasant in the fading twilight's last golden rays. The dark, dank deathbed was gone, and the breeze was cool and gentle against his clammy skin. Where was he? But he knew at once that this was a page turned; his old life was over, and he knew this for a certainty. Somehow, he had passed from one world to the next, and his failures as a man were forgotten, then, and his grown-up cares fell away like trivial, useless things, and were washed from his skin like a newborn's soul was cleansed by baptism.

"Cas---"

It came to him, on the wind. A voice. He didn't recognize it, but it seemed hauntingly familiar, and it was then that he saw the figure ahead of him, a small, dark blot on the horizon.

Susan? His first thought ran to the most obscure target, but the voice had seemed feminine or, perhaps, just young. It might well be his wife, welcoming him home - oh, he hoped that it was so...

He began to walk toward the figure, which was an easy task. His long, tiresome illness had vanished. A rush of exhilaration diffused through him, like colored ink through water; his body felt eager again, young and lithe. He could move his arms and legs perfectly, without every nerve ending in his body quivering with tremors of pain. His mind felt clear, for the first time in a long time, and he fingered the sword on his hip with fingers clad in tight, smooth skin. He wondered suddenly if his face was young, handsome again-it must be?-and the teasing words of his wife made him smile as he remembered them, you were always secretly vain.

"Hello?" He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out.

In response, the figure waved to him, but it was little more than a disjointed shadow and its identity was impossible to make out. Caspian began to run, and the wispy, knee-high blades of grass were trampled beneath his feet. In no time, he watched the figure become...a young girl with long, wavy hair the color of dull cherry wood. She had pale, delicate skin and, for a moment, he couldn't be sure who she was, really. Not his wife, obviously, and then...could it be?

"It's been a long time," she said. He moved close enough to her to see that her eyes were a fine, clear grey. She stared at him expectantly, and her rather large, soft-looking mouth curved into the barest hint of a smile. "Prince Caspian."

No one had called him Prince Caspian in years. He had been the High King of Narnia for all of his adult life, and it sounded rather absurd, this boyish title of Prince Caspian.

"Who... Susan? Are you...I mean, you are Susan? The Queen, Susan." He sounded ridiculous to his own ears, like a stuttering school boy. It was an odd dichotomy: in some ways, he still felt like the old man but, in others, he felt as green as the grass that surrounded them. "I've thought about you---"

"I thought about you too, sometimes." Her voice was amused, touched. The wind rustled her hair. God, she is young, he thought as the seconds ticked by with both of them staring at each other in silence. He didn't know what to say then, or if words were even the right currency for this exchange.

"Where are we?" He finally looked past her, to the endless expanse of flat grassland that stretched every way in each direction. "This can't be Narnia. I...just left there."

"This isn't Narnia," she said, and there was a quiet sadness to her voice. "It's somewhere else, beyond Narnia. But there are others here, as well."

She looked up at him, and she tentatively reached out to touch his arm. "I can't go back to Narnia, you remember? When it happened, when I died, I woke up here. As, I think, you did. Died, then woke up here, I mean."

"How did you die?" He said it without thinking, instead of what he had originally been planning to say, something of the more tactful yes-it's-been-the-same-for-us-both variety. He opened his mouth again, to say he was sorry, but she shook her head, slightly.

"It was a disease, a cancer," her reply was so quiet that he had to strain to catch her words. "You?"

"Old age," he shrugged, "more or less."

She laughed, then, and he noticed that it utterly transformed her face. The seriousness, the gravity that hung about her like a well-worn mantle dissolved into girlish gaiety, making her features seem almost beautiful in the fading light. Though, he was a little put out; he didn't quite perceive what was so funny about him dying miserably, in old age.

"I'm sorry, Caspian. Really. I just...," she smiled, and sobered a little. "I wish I could have seen you then. I can't ever imagine you growing old. You never aged at all when I thought of you. You were always the same as...when we knew each other. Always young, always so han--"

She stopped herself, face blushing apple-red from her cheeks to the roots of her hair, but he supplied the word that she had chosen to omit: always so handsome.

If there was ever a time to repeat their long-ago kiss, then this would be it, Caspian knew. She looked slim and lovely and all he wanted to do was touch her, to see if her skin felt as soft as it looked. He gave into impulse and faintly skimmed her jaw, her cheek, with trembling fingers. She felt warm and yielding under his touch; Susan was a hot-blooded girl, underneath her cool exterior, and he'd forgotten that. It was wonderful to discover these things again, like coming across one's favorite book years after it was lost and its story half-forgotten. All of his adolescent feelings came rushing back to life, and he felt suddenly clumsy with her, even though he was far more experienced than when they'd last seen each other.

"It has been a long time, Susan," he said, at last, "too long, I think." He was going to be courteous, then, and ask: could he could kiss her, would that be permissible to her?

But, she surprised him.

"Caspian," she said, but she didn't give him time to respond. She leaned over, in one quick, smooth movement and put her mouth over his; it was hesitant, though, a light brush that sent shivers of excitement down his spine. She nipped his lower lip with her teeth, lightly, and he pulled her closer, so that there was barely any space between them, and kissed her; really kissed her, and the kiss escalated from hesitant tenderness to frantic, violent and needy in a heartbeat. Tongues, lips and teeth: they gave, took, hurt and soothed in equal measure.

He couldn't describe how it felt; rather, he supposed, like a long, slow dive underneath the blue-green waters of Telmar Bay that he'd played in as a boy: weightless, breathless and painful, all at the same time. It was better than his faded memories, but these were adult passions now; maybe they were trapped in teenager's bodies, but their former, grown-up lives lingered inside of them, still. She was different, more aggressive than he remembered, and he hoped that he, at least, gave a better performance than the last time, when he'd been fumbling, frightened and unskilled.

"You've learned quite a bit since the last time," he murmured against her mouth, his voice husky with desire and amusement. "Someone taught you well."

He meant it to be a naughty bit of teasing, a compliment even, and he would've been pleased if she responded in kind, but her lips had gone cold and unresponsive with his words and he felt her stiffen in his arms.

They broke apart when Susan wrenched away from him, unexpectedly. She was still blushing, he noted, as furiously as ever, but there were shadows in her eyes that hadn't been there before. Her shoulders were hunched over, as if she were in pain, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Come on," she made a jerky motion for him to follow her. "It's nearing dark, and we should get back. It can get a little dangerous out here at night. There's home, it's a castle like Cair Paravel almost. Not as lavish, of course. Do you know what I'm talking about, Cair Paravel? And they're all there, too..."

She talked solidly for the next several minutes, about some land called "England" and Aslan and train crashes, and most of what she said he could not understand. What was a train and why did it crash? So, her brothers and sister were dead too, but not here with her? And Cair Paravel had been her home once, right? Every time he tried to ask a question, she cut him off and he could see, practically, the nervousness and fear dancing across the surface of her skin.

"Susan - wait!" But, she didn't. She was taking this badly and he couldn't entirely understand why. "Susan!"

He struggled to keep up, but she kept a maddeningly quick pace. He stared at her back and knew he'd made a mistake, somehow: perhaps a small one, or maybe a large one - who knew?

With no clear idea of what to do next, he followed her over the field, into the darkness of the woods, calling her name over and over again...


End file.
